Driverless Car Wins DARPA Competition with Continental Technology

Two Million Dollars for Robotic Vehicle “Boss”

Hanover, November 2007 – In a high-tech triumph for Continental, “Boss”, a self-driving Chevrolet Tahoe, won the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007 equipped with Continental technology. With the help of a dozen sensors and the international automotive supplier’s know-how in the domain of sensor data fusion, the vehicle computer was fed optimally prepared data on its surroundings. The “Boss” development team came away with the top prize – two million dollars.

The race track was an artificial suburb at the decommissioned George Air Force Base in Victorville, California (USA), in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Fifty vehicles with human drivers were under way on the streets. Inside eleven other cars, moving along at the locally approved speed, nobody occupied the driver’s or any other seats. The computer had taken over. What sounds like a science fiction film was actually the world’s most famous competition for autonomous ground vehicles, the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007, sponsored by the US Department of Defense’s research department. The task facing the driverless cars was to finish a 100km-long stretch in six hours – accident-free and without violating any traffic regulations. “Boss” took the day. It circulated skillfully around the test track, steered by the calculation prowess of ten high-performance computers, winding its way through narrow streets, recognizing closed stretches, avoiding other vehicles, making it through intersections and dealing with merging traffic without mishap. It even pulled into a parking spot by itself. As Dr. Michael Darms, an engineer who spent almost two years developing "Boss" for Continental, noted: “It was quite impressive how well our robot did, safely negotiating the stretch at a good clip, working its way around moving and stationary obstacles.” Continental tires also contributed to the victory. Long after the race was over, the team noticed a screw in the rear left tire. This had proven no problem at all because "Boss" was outfitted with self-sealing tires from Continental that can close a puncture for a certain time.

The roads the race would take place on weren't announced until just 48 hours prior to the event. This was done in the form of an electronic roadmap marked with the respective traffic symbols. The team was not informed of the three missions it had to tackle until a mere five minutes before a given start, when the info was made available on an USB stick.

DARPA provided a look into the future: An increasing number of intelligent safety systems – like the ContiGuard®, for instance – help avoid accidents and reduce injury. “Technologies like the intersection assistant or lane detector will be offered in run-of-the-mill passenger cars in short,” announced Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann, member of the Executive Board of Continental AG.

Source: Continental AG

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